Back | Next
Contents

Chapter 29

"This Stratford," said the Baroness, "sounds as though it might be interesting."

"In what way, Your Excellency?" asked Grimes.

"Unspoiled . . ."

"It won't stay that way long if Drongo Kane is there," Grimes said.

"You are prejudiced, Captain."

She took a dainty sip from her teacup. Grimes took a gulp from his. He badly needed something refreshing but nonalcoholic. It would have been bad manners to let his guests drink alone and he had taken too much for the neutralizer capsules to have their usual immediate effect

"Unspoiled," she said again. "This world the way it was before you and those others blundered in. The Social Evolution of a Lost Colony taking its natural course. If we leave now we shall arrive at Stratford before dark."

"There is the party tonight, Your Excellency," Grimes reminded her. "After all, Maya is a reigning monarch."

"The petty mayor of a petty city-state," she sneered. "But do not worry. I have already sent my sincere apologies for not being able to attend. But I can just imagine what that party will be like! Drunken tourists going native and lolloping around in disgusting, self-conscious nudity. Imitation Hawaiian music played on 'native' guitars imported from Llirith. Imitation Israeli horas. Meat charred to ruination over open fires. Cheap gin tarted up with fruit juices—probably synthetic—and served as genuine Morrowvian toddy . . ." She smiled nastily. "Come to that—you have already had too much to drink. Big Sister will be able to handle the pinnace by remote control while you sleep it off in the cabin."

"The pinnace?" asked Grimes stupidly.

"You, Captain, made a survey of this planet shortly after the first landings here. Surely you must remember that there is no site near to Stratford suitable for the landing of a ship, even one so relatively small as The Far Traveler."

Grimes did remember then and admitted as much. He said, too, that his local knowledge would be required to pilot the pinnace to Stratford. The Baroness said, grudgingly, that he might as well make some attempt to earn his salary.

Big Sister said nothing.

 

Grimes flew steadily south, maintaining a compass course and not following the meanderings of the river. Ahead the blue peaks of the Pennine Range lifted into an almost cloudless sky. An hour before sunset he knew that he could not be far from Stratford although, as he recalled, the little town was very hard to spot from the air. It was nestled in the river valley and the thatched roofs of its houses were overgrown with weeds. But there had been some quite remarkable rock formations that he had never gotten around to examining closely, rectangular slabs of dark gray but somehow scintillant stone, not far from the settlement.

Those slabs were still there.

So was a torpedo shape of silvery metal—the pinnace from Southerly Buster.

He said, pointing, "Kane's still here, Your Excellency."

"Are you afraid to meet him again?" she asked.

Grimes flushed angrily. "No," he said, "Your Excellency."

He was not frightened of Kane but he would have been willing to admit that he was worried. Kane was up to no good. Kane was always up to no good. He was a leopard with indelible spots.

People emerged from the little houses, from the pinnace, alerted by the racket of the boat's inertial drive. How many Terrans should there have been? Kane and ten of his passengers, seven men and three women . . . But standing there and looking up were thirty people. All of them were clothed, which seemed to indicate that there were no natives among them. Grimes studied the upturned faces through binoculars. Kane was not there—but suddenly that well remembered voice blasted from the transceiver.

"Ahoy, the pinnace! Who the hell are yer an' wot yer doin' here?"

Kane must be speaking from inside his own boat.

"The Far Traveler," replied Grimes stiffly into his microphone. "Her Owner, the Baroness d'Estang of El Dorado. And her Master."

"An' I'm Southerly Buster, Owner and Master, Welcome to Stratford. Come on down. This is Liberty Hall; you can spit on the mat an' call the cat a bastard!"

"It should be the local mayor—Queen Anne, isn't it?—to issue the invitation," said the Baroness to Grimes.

"Perhaps Queen Anne is dead," said Grimes. With sudden foreboding he remembered the old saying; Many a true word is spoken in jest

"Take us down, Captain," ordered the Baroness.

Grimes reduced vertical thrust and the pinnace settled slowly toward the ground, to the white sheet that somebody had spread to serve as a landing mark. She landed gently. Grimes cut the drive, actuated the controls of the airlock doors. He realized, too late, that he should have brought arms—but the six general purpose robots which had accompanied the humans from The Far Traveler would be capable of doing considerable damage to any enemy using nothing more than their own, enormously strong metal bodies.

He had landed about five meters from Southerly Buster's pinnace. A man came out through the airlock door of this craft—tall, gangling, clad in slate-gray shirt-and-shorts uniform with black, gold-braided shoulderboards. His straw-colored hair was untidy, even though short, and his face looked as though at some time in the past it had been shattered and then reassembled by a barely competent, unaesthetic plastic surgeon.

"Captain Kane?" the Baroness asked Grimes.

"Drongo Kane," he said.

She rose from her seat, was first out of the boat. Grimes followed her, then the robots. Kane advanced to stand in the forefront of his own people. He looked the Baroness up and down like a slave dealer assessing the points of a possible purchase. He bowed then—a surprisingly courtly gesture. He raised the Baroness's outstretched hand to his lips, surrendered it reluctantly as he came erect. Grimes could not see his employer's face but sensed that she was favorably impressed by her reception.

She said, "And now, Captain Kane, may I present my yachtmaster, Captain . . ."

"Grimes, Madam," supplied Kane with a grin. "I thought that I recognized his voice but didn't see how it could be him. But it is. Live on stage, in person. Singing and dancing."

"Mphm," grunted Grimes.

"No hard feelin's," said Kane, extending his right hand. "You've come down in the universe, I see—but I don't believe in kickin' a man when he's down."

Not unless there's some profit in it, thought. Grimes, taking the proffered paw and getting the handshake over as quickly as possible.

"You know, ma'am, I'm pleased that you an' me old cobber Grimes dropped in," Kane went on. "A couple of independent witnesses is just what I'm needin' right now. It'd be better if Grimes was still in the Survey Service—but at least he's not a Dog Star Line puppy."

"What are you talking about, Kane?" demanded Grimes.

"Just this. I —an' my legal eagle, Dr. Kershaw . . ." A tall, gray-haired, gray-clad man among the small crowd inclined his head' toward the newcomers . . . "have the honor of representin' the rightful owners of this planet"

"The rightful owners?" asked Grimes. "Too right" Grimes waved his right hand in a wide arc, indicating the twenty men and women who were standing a little apart from his own people. "The Little, Grant, James and Pettifer families!"

The names rang a faint bell in the recesses of Grimes' memory.

"Descendants," stated Kane, "of four of the human women who were among the Lode Cougar survivors!"

Back | Next
Framed